Self-proclaimed modern feminist Sigourney understands that the two most
pressing issues for young women in Australia today are knowing how to keep their
husbands happy and their houses beautiful.

But it's the plight of the single thirtysomethings that sparks her deepest
sympathies. "We've seen that period when single women were running around on
the streets and having a great time, but at the end of the day they're all very
lonely and sad.

"Deep down those women want to settle down and nest. This takeaway lifestyle
of women in their 30s isn't making them happy."

Sigourney wants to empower Australian women by "putting them in their right
place". And with a direct line to the nation's population, sensible shoes and
endless wardrobes of floral frocks, she hopes to be the one to set the example
for others to follow.

Anyone who has caught even a glimpse of the sleeper comedy Life
Support, which returns to SBS this week for a third season, should have
little difficulty detecting the biting satire as Rachael Coopes explains what
makes her character Sigourney tick.

Sigourney is one of the four young and good-looking presenters of Life
Support, a surreal and often very amusing parody of cloying and
relentlessly optimistic DIY lifestyle programs.

The humour is sometimes a mixed bag, its shards of blackness unlikely to warm
the hearts or minds of all viewers (one segment gives advice on getting your
teacher accused of pedophilia), but the corrosive and macabre views it presents
on Australian life strike a chord rarely seen or heard these days in home-grown
television comedy.

Satire, Coopes concedes, is a hard nut to crack, and it's not uncommon for
viewers to complain about the very things a segment has targeted. It's also not
uncommon for viewers to stray on to the show and only gradually realise that
what they're watching isn't, say, The Great Outdoors, but a monumental
pisstake of the genre.

According to Coopes, Tom "the chippy carpenter" Williams, from the Seven
Network's lifestyle show, is an avid fan of Life Support's happy but
dim, corner-cutting handyman Todd.

The satire works, Coopes believes, as the characters are "all people we
know". Importantly, too, the show taps the pulse of the popular zeitgeist. "At
the end of the day, Australians are obsessed with watching television to solve
their problems. So we're doing exactly that; telling them how to live their
lives so they don't have to think about it."

David McDonald, who has directed all three series, is one of the principal
writers of Life Support, which he produces with his business partner,
John Eastway.

"At the time it first came out," McDonald recalls, "no one was doing this
kind of satire, using satire to say something or as a launch pad to target
things. I don't consider All Aussie Adventures a satire, even though
it's a pisstake of the Leyland Brothers. There was nothing that was taking a few
big swings," he says.

Life Support has found an appreciative home at SBS, complementing
shows with surefire young viewer credentials such as Pizza, Crank
Yankers and (last year) John Safran's Music Jamboree. McDonald is
quick to agree that he wouldn't get away with such risque and jagged humour
elsewhere on Australian television - the ABC included.

The most notable change in this latest series comes with the introduction of
Jack Finsterer and Duncan Fellows in the roles, respectively, of Dr Rudi and
handyman Todd.

Dr Rudi, as close to a cult character as the show is likely to have, is a
South African men's health expert and financial adviser whose insensitivity and
tactlessness borders on the grotesque.

"He's the token ethnic of the group but happens to be whiter than white,"
explains McDonald. For the show's makers, having new actors fill old characters'
shoes is an opportunity too good to let slip.

After a skiing accident, Dr Rudi has had some, ahem, corrective surgery to
make him look "more heterosexual". When we meet him in the series opener, his
face is completely bandaged, Invisible Man-style, but for slits at his eyes and
mouth.

Recalling one his favourite soap opera cliches (Rebecca Gilling's return as
the sister of her character, who had been killed off, in Return to
Eden), McDonald says he'd already thought of putting the old Dr Rudi
through a similar plot twist - but with an extra twist: "When the bandages came
off viewers would discover there was nothing different."

This time, however, viewers will notice something different about Dr Rudi,
although for McDonald, this actor swap is just another dimension to the satire.
"In the cookie-cutter style of television presenters, there's always someone
ready to step in. Like a warehouse of these people, you open a door and there
they are."

As for Todd, he's the same old happy-go-lucky, mindlessly satisfied bloke,
and in many ways an emblem for McDonald of what makes all the characters work.
"The charm of Todd is he'll go to extraordinary lengths to achieve the most
miniscule result and be proud of it. They're all incredibly earnest, they take
their jobs so seriously.

"As soon as there's cynicism or a wink to the camera that they know they're
`on' and being funny, you're dead. I think that would undermine the truth of
it," McDonald says.

"As patronising as they are as characters, if we started doing that, we'd be
patronising to the audience. If we know it's a joke straight away, it loses its
impact."